Universal Business Language (UBL) is an open library of standard electronic XML business documents for procurement and transportation such as purchase orders, invoices, transport logistics and waybills. UBL was developed by an OASIS Technical Committee with participation from a variety of industry data standards organizations. UBL is designed to plug directly into existing business, legal, auditing, and records management practices. It is designed to eliminate the re-keying of data in existing fax- and paper-based business correspondence and provide an entry point into electronic commerce for small and medium-sized businesses.
UBL is owned by OASIS and is currently available to all, with no royalty fees. The UBL library of business documents is a well-developed markup language with validators, authoring software, parsers and generators. As of June 2021, the latest approved OASIS Standard is UBL Version 2.3, which includes a total of 91 business document types. All UBL minor versions are fully backwards compatible back to UBL Version 2.0.
UBL traces its origins back to the EDI standards and other derived XML standards.
Ontologies are used to describe markup languages for business workflows. UBL is only one option to map e-business processes into an OWL description.
Downloads
Current
UBL 2.3 https://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.3/UBL-2.3.html (Published 15 June 2021)
UBL 2.2 - http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.2/UBL-2.2.html (Published 9 July 2018)
UBL 2.1 - http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.1/UBL-2.1.html
UBL 2.1 as ISO/IEC 19845:2015 - http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/
Historical
UBL 2.0 - http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.0-update/
UBL 1.0 - http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/
UBL 2.1 (ISO/IEC 19845:2015) and UBL 2.2
OASIS UBL Technical Committee and ISO/IEC 19845 Maintenance Agency
The OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) Technical Committee is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the OASIS Standard and has been designated the maintenance agency for ISO/IEC 19845. The maintenance governance procedures describe how committee and non-committee members contribute to the development of the specification.
Business processes described and supported in UBL
Business process support originating with UBL 1.0 (2004)
Ordering, Fulfilment, Billing
Business process support added in UBL 2.0 (2006)
Catalogue, Quotation, Payment, Statement, Transport Services, Certificate of Origin
Business process support added in UBL 2.1 (2013)
, Vendor Managed Inventory, Intermodal Freight Management, Utility Billing, and Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, Replenishment and e-Invoice / e-Archive and e-Ledger in Turkey
Business process support added in UBL 2.2 (2018)
Weight Statement, Business Directory,
Standard document types defined by UBL
Document types originally defined in UBL 1.0 (2004)
Order, Order Response, Order Response Simple, Order Change, Order Cancellation, Despatch Advice [Advance Ship Notice], Receipt Advice, Invoice
Document types added in UBL 2.0 (2006)
Added document types for sourcing: Catalogue, Catalogue Deletion, Catalogue Item Specification Update, Catalogue Pricing Update, Catalogue Request, Quotation, Request for Quotation
Added document types for fulfillment: Bill of Lading, Certificate of Origin, Forwarding Instructions, Packing List, Transportation Status, Waybill
Added document types for billing: Credit Note, Debit Note, Freight Invoice, Reminder, Self Billed Credit Note, Self Billed Invoice
Added document types for payment: Remittance Advice, Statement
Added supplementary document types: Application Response, Attached
Document
Document types added in UBL 2.1 (2013)
Added document types for : Awarded Notification, Call for Tenders, Contract Award Notice, Contract Notice, Guarantee Certificate, Tender, Tender Receipt, Tenderer Qualification, Tenderer Qualification Response, Unawarded Notification
Added document types for Collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment: Exception Criteria, Exception Notification, Forecast, Forecast Revision, Item Information Request, Prior Information Notice, Trade Item Location Profile
Added document types for Vendor Managed Inventory: Instruction for Returns, Inventory Report, Product Activity, Retail Event, Stock Availability Report